Pharmaceutical Medicine: Outcomes, and the importance of Empiricism

Observing the outcomes of taking pharmaceutical medicine is important. Such observations are an important element of science - examining the world, investigating what is happening around us. It is called empirical science.

        "Empirical evidence is information acquired by observation or experimentation. Scientists record and analyze this data. The process is a central part of the scientific method." 

"I'm ill again, I've been diagnosed with (illness3) now!"

"Oh! What bad luck. That's a nasty illness, I am so sorry."

"You know I have never been well since I got (illness1) and was given that (drug) to treat it."

"Yes, I remember. You went down with (illness2) soon after; and now you have (illness3)."

"I'm just unlucky; or perhaps I am just getting old".

So what has caused these illnesses? Is it a matter of luck? Can it be put down to ageing? Or are other factors involved - like the 'side effects' from the medication we have taken for previous illnesses?

Since early 2021 many people have been having similar conversations regarding the Covid-19 pandemic, and the vaccines used to prevent and treat it. It is time for us all to start asking the same questions. Anyone who actually observes, and considers what they are seeing, cannot help but conclude that the world is witnessing dreadful adverse vaccine reactions, including heart disease and death. Millions of people, particularly in the most vaccinated countries, are reporting these 'side effects' to national drug regulators. One Covid-19 vaccine (AstraZeneca) has already been quietly withdrawn from the market, and described as "defective".

Conventional, or pharmaceutical medicine, have always (and are clearly doing so now) routinely dismissed such observations and reports as ‘anecdotal’ and ‘unscientific’. The problem is that medical science does not usually look at vaccine or drug harm without being paid; and drug companies won’t pay for them to do so if the outcome is likely to produce bad publicity! So such conversations pass by, never examined, never investigated.

Yet these observation are the basis of science - empirical science. If something is observed it should trigger more science, more investigation either to confirm or deny the observation. Britannica describes empirical evidence as "information gathered directly or indirectly through observation or experimentation that may be used to confirm or disconfirm a scientific theory or to help justify, or establish as reasonable, a person’s belief in a given proposition. A belief may be said to be justified if there is sufficient evidence to make holding the belief reasonable."

So medical science usually ignores our observations about health, preferring not to investigate in case what they find is not appreciated by their drug company paymasters.

Yet our observations are important for another, more practical reason: what we witness going on around us is a clinical outcome - they are the outcome of an illness, and/or the outcome of medical treatment. It is a truism that patients are only interested in medical treatment only when they are sick. They then want treatments that make them better, treatments that are both effective (an outcome) and safe (another outcome).

Most patients are not interested in what has once took place in a scientific laboratory!

Yet this is why pharmaceutical medicine have never been interested in treatment outcomes. Drug companies invest in ‘medical science’ for one reason - to produce positive evidence of the safety and effectiveness of a treatment. This evidence forms the basis of their advertising and promotion; it is used to encourage people to take the treatment; it ensures that profits are made - this is their primary purpose. 

Any outcome of a treatment, after this, might prove that the treatment is less safe, and less effective than patients have been told. This is not wanted. It’s bad advertising. It's not what pharmaceutical medicine wants us to know!

In the 1960's and 1970's conventional medicine clearly recognised the need for empiricism in medicine, and the importance of outcomes. Around the world, National Drug Regulators were created in order to ensure there was no further drug scandals, like Thalidomide disaster. Each new drug had to go through a process of scientific tests; and in addition reporting systems were established. 

These reporting system were based almost entirely on patient observations about the outcomes of medical treatment.

The result was that many new drugs and vaccines were tested, approved by the regulator, came to the market, and given to patients. Then patients reported on adverse drug reactions; the drug regulator investigated the reports, and then took appropriate action. The result was that many pharmaceutical drugs were eventually banned, withdrawn, or 'discontinued' because they were were found to be either ineffective, or unsafe for patients. I have listed many of these banned drugs here. It is a very long list. But what is becoming clearer, as the years have passed, is that drug regulation is no longer as effective as it was during the latter decades of the 20th century.

The reason for this is also becoming clearer. Drug Regulation is now effectively controlled by the Pharmaceutical Industry. I first wrote about this situation over 10 years ago now. The situation has become progressively much worse. The Regulator is now controlling the Regulated. Even the unprecedented number of patient reports about the harm caused by the Covid-19 vaccines, based on patient observation, have been largely ignored. It is not that the reports have been investigated, and found to be unreliable. They have not been properly investigated!

We are sicker now than we have ever been. Name any chronic disease that has not reached epidemic proportions during the last 70-100 years - the years when pharmaceutical medicine has gradually taken over health provision, and now control it entirely.

Many people are beginning to ask important questions about the outcomes of conventional medicine:

• is what I am being told about pharmaceutical treatments honest and true?
• what are the health outcomes of taking pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines?
  
• could my illness be an adverse drug or vaccine reaction?
• when will medical science be expected to focus on adverse drug outcomes?
  
• how many people will drug regulators allow to contract a serious disease, how many people allowed to die, before they take action to protect patients?
• why is it that politicians, governments, and the mainstream media do not tell us about what is going on?
• how much more money will we have to spend on pharmaceutical medicine before we reach the conclusion that it is ineffective, and unsafe for patients.
  

"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free". But do we know the truth about health care? And do we want to know the truth? Or are we just looking for reassurance? Is it true that many people don't care about how dangerous and ineffective conventional medicine is?

“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

John 8:32

I listened to a BBC Radio 4 programme on 26 November 2018. It was part of a series called 'Thought Cages", an episode called "Be successful or be loved? The NHS Agenda". It's message was amazing. Rory Sutherland, the presenter, began by asking what I thought was a silly question.

• Do people visit their doctor in order to get well?
• Or do they go in order to check that someone cares about them?

The programme sought to answer this strange question. Basically, it said that we, as patients, were seeking re-assurance, that someone is listening to us, that someone cares enough to take our illness seriously, and to treat us.

This motivation, the programme said, is hidden, buried deep inside us - it was called the 'Elephant in the brain'. We do not care so much how we are treated, just that we are treated. We are not looking for the best medicine, the medicine that provides the best outcome, the best life expectancy. How we are treated, medically, is less important than how we are treated, socially. It is not the quality of the treatment we care about, more the process of receiving it.

To begin with I was sceptical about the whole idea. Perhaps I did not want to believe it. After all, I spend a lot of my time trying to convince people the conventional medicine provides us with poor patient outcomes, that pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are both ineffective and unsafe. But then, Sutherland gave this stunning example of the process at work.

Harold Shipman was a doctor convicted of killing 15 patients in 2000, and there seems little doubt that he killed many more. Yet his patients loved him. He treated them respectfully, he was friendly, and he was prepared to visit them at home. In the end it was not his patients that realised what he was doing, it was a taxi driver who noticed that he was losing a lot of patients. So he went to the police. Apparently, many of Shipman's patients did not change their doctor, they changed their taxi driver!

Is this why so many people are reluctant to abandon conventional medicine, despite the enormous harm it is doing, and has been doing to our health over the last 70 years and more? Aren't we looking for the best, most effective, and safest medicine. Are we unconcerned about the outcomes of the treatment we are given?

One contributor gave another example, a piece of research undertaken with patients who were about to undergo heart surgery. Would patients be prepared to pay a small amount of money to find out which surgeon had the lowest mortality rate. The study concluded that people were not interested in this. Very few agreed to pay. So the conclusion was that it is not medical competence we care about. The treatment we are given might kill us - but as long as we feel the doctor cares, and is doing the best he can, we are content.

People want to trust their doctor, and forget about everything else. We hand over responsibility. The outcome of the treatment is not important. There is research that shows most patients do not want to know about divergences in health care standards. Easy access to treatment, amenably offered, is more important. Do we like the doctor, do we warm to him or her.

It was, the programme suggested, better for the surgeon to be friendly than competent!

Unfriendly doctors lose patients, they will go elsewhere, presumably to other doctors where they receive a warmer welcome, a more positive response. The NHS is indeed measuring patient experience, and as a result producing league tables. These tables do not concern patient outcomes but the social experience of the patient. It is more about being treated courteously, a friendly staff, keeping waiting times as brief as possible.

In particular, research has demonstrated that people don't like waiting, they hate the uncertainty, the doubt whether anyone is ever going to see them. One strategy, adopted by airports apparently, is that we are now made to walk a couple of miles to the luggage carousel so that we do not have to wait! Hence the importance the NHS gives to waiting lists.

So, although conventional medicine is ineffective and unsafe, this is not how most people are judging it. The programme discussed whether patients were looking for expensive medicine (a medicine that is effectively bankrupting the UK's NHS), or a surgery waiting room with snazzy colour schemes, up-to-date magazines, and comfortable sofa’s. One research study asked patients whether they thought that ALL drugs should be available to them, regardless of cost, and even if they did not work. They did!

So presumably many patients also wanted to be given pharmaceutical drugs even if they caused disease, even if they killed patients. Patients, the programme said, show little interest in patient outcomes, little interest in mortality.

Patients were looking for reassurance. This also struck a bell for me. Most people, when they feel unwell, want to get better, but most importantly they want to know what is wrong with them. They want a diagnosis. I have often noticed this. "I feel so much better now that I have a diagnosis, now I know what is wrong with me". When it is pointed out that a diagnosis does not make them better, they still need safe and effective treatment, that is NOT what is important. Even if the diagnosis is that the patient has only 6 months to live it is reassuring. At least they know!

So forget safe treatment. Forget the dangers of treatment. Forget the ineffectiveness of treatment. As long as the experience of accessing treatment is good, as long as there is a good explanation, as long as access treatment is easy - that is what matters.

The programme ended with a remark that while £billions were being spent on health there appears to be little or no improvement in patient outcomes, in life expectancy. One contributor said that if USA health spending (the highest in the world) could be halved, and it would make little real difference to the nation's health.

The programme explained for me a little more about the irrationality of how we provide health services, something I have written about in depth before. If homeopathy is superior to conventional, drug-based medicine in terms of effectiveness, safety, cost and patient outcome it makes little difference. We have to understand that this is not necessarily what many people are looking for.

Yet I am not sure that this is the whole story. We are tricked into thinking we do not have to worry about the safety and effectiveness of conventional medicine.

• Governments promise us 'the best medicine available'. 
• The conventional medical establishment tell us that they are winning the battle against disease.
• Our doctors, in the main, are very friendly and kind, and we do believe that are trying to do the best for us, and certainly would not harm us. 
• The mainstream media plays its role in reinforcing, and failing to question all these messages.
• Television portrayals of conventional medicine frequently support these messages (something I will be blogging about very soon - have you noticed how many medical soap operas there are on television these days?)

So we trust our doctors and the medicine they give us. It is time for everyone to wise up. Yet to wise up means we have to start questioning everything we have been told about health throughout our lives. And that is not easy. But we need to do it before conventional medicine makes us sick, and sicker, and then kills us.